I only demean a few teams that are worthy of demeaning.

I admire the better teams like St. Helens, Leeds, Castleford, Hull FC, and Wigan, as well as the beloved French teams, plus Toronto, and London.

I'm guessing that means we can expect to see phrases such as Helpless/Hapless/Hopeless/Horrendous Hull KR this season

Do you know how old Jean actually is

Back on topic:

Warrington by 4
Hull FC by 12
Wigan by 10
Saints by 2 (could go either way)
Wakefield by 8
Widnes by 2 (could go either way)

Welcome back KR, certainly the most deserving candidate for promotion last season and they have decent home support and good travelling numbers too. (I reserve the right to completely change this if they beat Trinity tomorrow ).

Its going to be another great season and I think there is already pressure on Wane at Wigan, after a very ordinary season in 2017.
How Leeds cope with out McGuire will be interesting and if Saints pick up where they finished last season, they would be my pick for the LLS.

Not necessarily.

I like Tim Sheens. He is a very distinguished coach who has achieved 4 Grand Final victories -- 3 with Canberra, 1 with Wests Tigers.
He also seems like a nice man on a personal level.

I would like to see Hull KR do well this year, so we can keep the enthusiastic rivalry with Hull FC going. It is good for the game.

I just fear that Hull KR have not recruited well enough yet.

Half @rsed HKR?

Easy wins for both Hull teams, Saints, Warrington and Wigan

Regards

King James

Is this the quickest anyone has been proven wrong?

Well Played Leeds.......defended really well.

Even though Wire could have potentially pinched it, I thought Leeds were fairly comfortably the better side during the 80 mins and as you would expect they just generally looked the more cohesive unit who looked better in attack and defence. Wire will take time to gel and hit their straps, so we'll see with them.BMM was surprisingly invisible for them apart from right at the end with a decent run, so was Brown tbh. Myler had a decent first outing for Leeds I thought.

Felt sorry for young Walker at the end there letting the try in, he had a blinder up till then and rightly still won the MOTM.

In fairness that second wolves try shouldn't have been awarded so that close finish should never have happened - first Atkins shoved Cuthbertson to the ground at the ptb and then another player (Parcell maybe) was shoved in the back off the ball chasing the kick. Had it gone upstairs it would have rightly been disallowed but it seems Bentham was more interested in an exciting finish than applying the laws.

Any centre in the NRL, and most in Super League, would have scored the try that Atkins bombed by not diving under the tacklers. His jump in the air was a crazy schoolboy standard error.

He does not deserve ever to be considered for an England jersey.

Luckily he never seems to be considered!

He’s a strange bloke Atkins. You could almost see his tongue sticking out celebration going through his head as he lept in the air.

It’s gone to number 1 on my list of favourite Atkins moments, above the Grand Final of 2016 when he gave his huge celebration even though he clearly knew he’d lost the ball and also a time against us when he pulled his huge celebration out after scoring a try even though Wire were about 20 points down.

Strange lad!

I actually saw more positives in the Wire performance than I did in the Leeds one. Their defence will improve and they look to have some quality strike players in attack so I expect them to get much better. Similarly to the GF, Leeds played the occasion/circumstance (1st competitive game for months) much better than Warrington did.

What's interesting is that not a lot gets said about the spoiling tactics employed by Leeds, lot's of cynical and purposeful penalties given away on their own line to stop the game dead last night. I'm not saying it's right or wrong but when a side in cherry and white do it or a team from the bottom end of the table employ those tactics, they are quickly judged as being negative.

The reason nobody's mentioning it is that it didn't happen. Leeds were not playing spoiling rugby at all last night. When they were on their line defending for their lives individual errors were made and penalties given away, but no more so than by Warrington (or at least it wouldn't have been had the ruck been evenly policed). People get critical of Wigan and others because their entire defence is based around the prolonged wrestle/third man in/slow peel etc. that is not what Leeds' defence is about.

As for the game itself, Leeds didn't just play the occasion better, they played better in both attack and defence.